Art should be experienced in a place that allows staying': hosting as a practice - Glasshouse ArtLifeLab, Brooklyn, NY.

In November, 2013, I received an invitation from Lital Dotan and Eyal Perry, co-founders and artistic directors of Glasshouse ArtLifeLab in Brooklyn, NYC. Situated on an avenue bordering two racially distinctive and diverse neighborhoods in South Williamsburg (Hispanic and Hasidic), Glasshouse is a small cooperative art centre which functions as gallery and home to its artist-directors. Hallway, living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom are (equally) gallery space through which visitors are invited to negotiate the private and the public, where these two realms occupy the same location. Hosted by the directors, I in turn became a ‘guest host’ at Glasshouse for 3 weeks. Dotan describes Glasshouse as ‘a transient, autonomous zone within an ordinary domestic space, a practice heterotopia’ where performance itself becomes a transient architecture or a set of relationships offering provision. The term ‘host’ (or the activity of ‘hosting’) summons two contrastive meanings. On the one hand, it suggests a benevolent, inviting and supportive individual or environment. In its inception the term invokes division of self/other and the coming together of those two in and through difference. Thus ‘hosting’ can usher in a more sinister set of meanings. In biological terms, for example, the host is considered an organism that harbors a parasite, providing nourishment or shelter without consent or the knowledge of being turned into unwitting host. The parasite – ‘parasite’ coming from the Greek word parastos meaning a person or thing which eats at someone else’s table - can damage the tissue of the host, effectively destroying the living organism that enables its survival. Focusing upon my residency at Glasshouse, this research paper begins to think through some of these ideas and the rich and paradoxical meanings the term ‘host’ suggests.